


Deep Sea Hearts Can't Be Broken

by lalalalalawhy



Category: The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Laserfish, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4993369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/pseuds/lalalalalawhy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phillip Fathom and Captain Laserbeam have begun teaming up, but not everything is smooth sailing.</p><p>
  <em>Prompt: Phillip Fathom: “I want to speak to him directly.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Sea Hearts Can't Be Broken

_“WHERE IS HE??”_ Phillip Fathom shouted at the hapless henchman. Fathom's voice, always a low-pitched growl, was, at this moment strained and broken, a gravelly howl. “ _WHERE IS HE??_ ” he shouted again, volume rising.

“D-d-do you mean Captain Laserbeam?” the henchman asked, visibly quivering. This was above his pay grade, he thought, trying to sidle behind the table without angering Phillip Fathom any more.

“OF COURSE THAT’S WHO I MEAN!” Fathom barked. “ _WHERE IS HE?? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM??”_

“Gosh, fella,” the henchman said, holding his hands out in a placating manner and trying to make himself as small and unthreatening as possible. “I haven’t done anything with him. He was right here, under the thrall of Ronald Dump, the Terror of the Iowa Caucus, and then he was gone! Musta laser willpowered his way out or somethin’.” The henchman glanced behind the table; he was nearly there.

Before he got a chance to put a barrier between himself and the clear and present threat, Fathom took two strides to close the distance between them. Fathom hauled the man up by the lapels, until they were nose to nose.

“ _You’d better hope he’s alive,”_ Fathom growled at the henchman, each word dripping with unspoken threats. The henchman shrank even further and whimpered a little.

Fathom dropped the henchman to the ground. Laserbeam clearly wasn't in Ronald Dump's skyscraper/casino/headquarters any longer, but there was no way for Fathom to know where he was and whether he was trying yet again to laser his way out of danger.

Fathom felt himself coming unmoored as he glanced at the henchman, still on the ground. He whirled around, his Mariana Trench coat fluttering out behind him like a cape, to glare at the door. No sign of him: no tell-tale laser singe marks, no threads of red spandex, no chipper audio message hidden in a microchip. He was just gone. Fathom felt the world spin around him. He was a ship lost at sea. A ship lost in a storm. A storm like the one that killed his parents.

In this swirling typhoon of his own cascading thoughts, Fathom could just barely pick out a shrill sound.

The Adventurekateer distress signal. [Thanks fish hearing.]

Turning on his heel, Fathom embarked for the Adventurekateer Clubhouse. It was his only hope.

Upon arrival, he was greeted by one of Laserbeam's many child helpers. This one looked particularly shrill.

“Oh, hey, Phillip Fathom,” the Adventurekateer said. 

“ _Is he here?”_ Fathom slammed his hands down on the desk. He tried to modulate his voice (she was a child after all), but it didn’t work very well. The child still looked taken aback. What's the matter, had she never seen a deep sea detective at the end of his towline before? 

“You mean Cap’n Laserbeam?" she asked. "Well sure. I think he set off the distress signal to get you to come on by!”

Fathom seethed, furious both at Laserbeam and at his own reaction. He had never let anyone affect him like this before. He hadn't intended to let Laserbeam hold this kind of power over him. He had locked that part of himself away years before, lost forever at sea with his parents. Until now.

“ _I want to speak to him directly,”_ he said. 

“Okay, um, he’s just through that door," the Adventurekateer said, pointing. “And I think he’s alone.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively, but Fathom had already stopped paying attention.

Fathom took a deep breath and stalked his way over to the door. He stepped through and caught sight of Laserbeam's back, bent over a filing cabinet in the corner. Fathom closed the door behind him, leaning against it. It was only his experience resisting the pressure of the Abyssopelagic layer that kept him upright at all. Relief washed over him like high tide. 

“Phillip! Good, you’re here. I bet you’re wondering-” Laserbeam turned and began to walk toward Fathom, but halted suddenly, startled. “Leaping laser beams, Phillip! You look terrible.”

Fathom wanted to be angry. He wanted to growl out his frustration at Laserbeam, at his insistence on putting himself in danger first, at his eagerness to put himself in front of every death ray and freeze bomb he could find.

But the feelings of relief were too great. He stalked over to Captain Laserbeam and grabbed him into a clumsy embrace, webbed fingers gripping too tightly.

“Woah, hey there. Hello to you too,” Laserbeam tried to position himself so he could see Fathom’s face. “Phillip? Are you… are you alright?”

Fathom finally pulled back, still gripping both of Captain Laserbeam’s biceps. “ _Of course I’m not alright, Joshua,"_ he growled. _"Not with you leaping your laserbeams all over and trying as hard as you can to get yourself killed.”_ Fathom closed his eyes, unable to look at the confused look on Laserbeam's face as he tried to understand. He opened them again almost immediately. Damn the man, idiotic and shining like the sun. Fathom never could stop looking.

 _“_ Is this about Ronald Dump?" Laserbeam asked, not unkindly. "I could take him one-handed. I could take him with a single laser, and, as you know, I have one hundred lasers.”

“ _You know this is about more than that,”_ Fathom said. “ _I can’t-_ ” he gulped, and closed his eyes again. His next words sounded as though they were ripped from him, a half sob-half growl worthy of the deepest-dwelling sea creatures. “ _I can’t lose you. I can't be alone again.”_

“Oh, hey, Phillip, is this what that is about?” Laserbeam put his hands around the back of Fathom’s neck and pulled their foreheads together. “Hey, listen to me. Listen.” 

Fathom glanced up to see Captain Laserbeam’s eyes trained on his like, well, like laser beams. 

"That will never be the case, Phillip," Laserbeam said, imbuing his words with the full power of one hundred lasers. "You won't ever be alone again, not as long as I’m around.”

“Phillip,” he said again, quieter this time, but more forceful. “Not as long as I’m around.”

Fathom gazed into Laserbeam's eyes and let himself be pulled back into a hug. He felt the smallest flicker, like the glow from a tiny bioluminescent jellyfish deep below the surface, and, for the first time in a long time, allowed himself to hope.


End file.
